SEOUL, March 4 (UPI) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's influential sister said Tuesday that the deployment of a U.S. aircraft carrier to South Korea would compel Pyongyang to bolster its nuclear arsenal and ramp up military provocations.
The Nimitz-class nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson and its strike group docked at a naval base in the southeastern city of Busan on Sunday, the first carrier visit under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
"As soon as its new administration appeared this year, the U.S. has stepped up the political and military provocations against the DPRK, 'carrying forward' the former administration's hostile policy," Kim Yo Jong said, using the official acronym for North Korea.
In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim said the United States has been deploying strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula at a "constant" level and denounced the carrier's visit as "hostile and confrontational."
"The action-accompanied hostile policy toward the DPRK pursued by the U.S. at present is offering sufficient justification for the DPRK to indefinitely bolster up its nuclear war deterrent," Kim said.
"The DPRK is also planning to carefully examine the option for increasing the actions threatening the security of the enemy at the strategic level," she added.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff called Kim's criticism "nothing more than sophistry aimed at justifying nuclear missile development and building pretext for a provocation."
"North Korea's nuclear weapons are absolutely unacceptable and the only way for North Korea to survive is to abandon its obsession and delusion about nuclear weapons," the JCS said in a text message sent Tuesday to reporters.
"If the North conducts a provocation using legitimate and defensive South Korea-U.S. military activities as an excuse, we will respond overwhelmingly," the JCS added.
The visit by the USS Carl Vinson underscores Washington's commitment to the region, the U.S. Navy said in a press release Sunday.
"An aircraft carrier port visit demonstrates our commitment to the alliance between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea," Rear Adm. Michael Wosje, commander of Carrier Strike Group One, said. "Our alliance remains the linchpin of peace and security in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula."
The Vinson's visit was the first by a U.S. aircraft carrier since the nuclear-powered USS Theodore Roosevelt arrived in June. It comes ahead of the U.S.-South Korea Freedom Shield joint military exercise, scheduled to kick off this month.
Pyongyang regularly condemns the allies' joint drills as rehearsals for an invasion.
North Korea has maintained its belligerent rhetoric toward the United States, despite speculation that Trump may look to revive nuclear negotiations with Kim Jong Un. During Trump's first term, the two leaders held a pair of high-profile summits and met briefly a third time at the DMZ.
The diplomatic outreach failed to result in a nuclear deal, however, and Pyongyang has accelerated the development of its weapons programs in the intervening years.
Last week, the North test-fired strategic cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea in a demonstration of what Pyongyang called its "counterattack capability in any space and the readiness of its various nuke operation means."
